Closing Blog

Mr(s) Moderator,

This is my A2 Media Studies Coursework. This blog started in the summer of 2010 when I began my preliminary task of a lip syncing exercise. From there, I researched in to similar products (ie- other music videos) to get an idea about typical genre conventions which I used also in the production of my video.

You will also find my Print Production Tasks throughout December 2010 and finally my finished product (my music video) and evaluation.

This blog is now closed and ready for assessment. :)

Question 4; How Did You Use Media Technologies In The Construction & research, Planning & Evaluation Stages?

Question 3 - What Have You Learned From Your Audience Feedback?

In order to answer this question, I asked a group of people the same age as my target audience for their opinions on the music video...

Qu 3

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To get a more detailed response, I asked a few other members of my target audience on MSN Messenger. I believe that I was able to 'push' my respondee's further to get a more specific response, as it is instant messaging and so they respond quickly and I can ask them more specific questions than I could the group.

Further feedback

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However, in order to get a more detailed response, I interviewed a few of my target audience members; Ricky, 18, Dan, 16 and Cate, 17. I believe this age range is the more common for our music video, and as our video is unisex, I asked for both, the male and female points of view, focussing more on the male to reflect our target audience. I asked them in person as I believe I could push them even further than I could on MSN and Facebook

Video feedback

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Question 2; How Effective Is The combination Of Your Main Product & Ancillary Texts?

Question 1; In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develop Or Challenge Forms & Conventions Of Real Media Products?

Final Music Video

Production; 22/01/11

Today, We started filming our music video. As the narrative of our video consists of exterior shots,we were thankful that the weather remained dry for us so we were able to shoot without any problems, which was one of my main worries when planning this video.

The shoot went to plan and we were able to get all of the narrative shots needed in one day which I was thankful for as this saved time later on.

This image shows me and my partner filming our protagonist; the scarecrow character.

We plan to continue filming our band performance shots on Wednesday for the rest of our clips.

Print Production; Back Cover

Album Cover

Costumes & Props

Within a music video, costume and props are vital in attracting the audiences attention and making the video appear professional. Within my music video, the majority of the costumes will be simple and easy to get hold of, but should give a professional look.

The band;

The band will be wearing skinny jeans in the music video. This clothing style is typical of an indie ban

d, as Green Day and Biffy Clyro also share this clothing style, and are both of the same genre. In order to make the band stand out from the backers and the main character, we will ensure the band wear black skinnies, so that they look like a group.

The Scarecrow;

The scarecrow will be wearing denim dungarees on top of old fashioned clothing, such as ripped

Casting

The cast for our music video will consist of the following;

Band;

For the band, we will be using three males; one as the singer, one as the guitar player and one as the drummer. However, due to the constant change in locations throughout the music video, we will not be using instruments throughout, so the audience can only assume that the three characters are band members, as only the singer will be lip syncing throughout the video. However, the band will be known as they will be introduced in the artwork of the digipack.

Scarecrow;

As this character is the protagonist of the video, it will also be the most remembered and the most iconic, due to its entropic role throughout. For this role, we will be using Will Tyler, as we believe he will make a good scarecrow, both acting and physically.

Dancers;

We will be using a handful (4-8) of backing dancers who will enter during the most uplifting time of the song to add a further lift to the mood and atmosphere.

Location Shots

As planned, me and my partner went out and took photos of possible location shots for our music video. We did this so we could compare and see where would be the best place to set and film our music video.

Time Planning

Me and my partner have sat down and discussed when we are going to do different tasks within the planning task leading up to the music video.

This is our time plan.

Pitch

Me and my partner produced a pitch to show the concept of our music video, rough ideas such as cast and locations etc. This is our pitch;

Technology Skills & Aims

Since the start of the week, I have learnt a lot about technology and different programmes which I will be using for my music video and production work. Due to my inexperience with these programmes such as Photoshop, I thought this was a good place to start to develop my technology skills. I knew that effects such as airbrushing and reduplicating images would all be useful when creating my digipack and advert. I also wished to learn to fade and layer images but due to the lack of time available, this is something I will have to learn whilst/if I use these effects in my production work.

I was motivated to develop these specific technical skills because I knew they would be useful when creating my production work. After doing some research into digipacks, I noticed that many use special effects for the front cover, and wished to reflect this on my digipack. In order to this successfully, I needed to look at the different effects which were available on the programmes such as Photoshop. This has been my main motivation to develop my technical skills this week, as the majority of the effects available are new to me, so it's like starting from the very start when it comes to the effects for my work; making me keen to learn.

Another reason for my motivation is the relationship between technical skills and creativity. For example, I believe for a printed piece, such as a digipack and advert, technical skills are vital in order to create a creative piece of work. Without decent technical skills, the production work, I believe, will consist of redundant images, whether it be photographs or cartoon/drawn images. I believe the creativity and entropy lies within the technical skills

do you develop skills differently now compared with when you first started on the course?

how did media professionals develop the skills they needed to get on?

how do uni students develop technical skills?

Technological Skills

This week, I am going to be working on my technological skills, which I will be improving for the coursework; whether it be music video or production work. For example, one of my main flaws which I will be needing for this coursework is my inability to use Photoshop. I will be needing this programme for my production work, as I will be editing photographs taken for my advert and my CD Digipack. Specifically, I will be improving and learning to airbrush photographs to give specific looks. For example, my band will be airbrushed in order to give a professional look to the image; making them appear flawless. My protagonist however, the scarecrow, will be airbrushed in to different ways; one to look evil; so I'll be messing around with the different effects on Photoshop this week to find the many ways of making someone look scary. The other

http://www.associatedcontent.com/video/26163/how_to_make_someone_look_evil_in_photoshop.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IVE6n-28ZY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQI39SJbikM

Creative Tasks

This week I have been creating my animated storyboard for my music video. This includes drawing out a shot to shot plan of what exactly will be happening throughout the music video, which helped me even further with my own understanding of what I wish to happen, the types of shots I will capture, and gave me an understanding of how long the video will take to film. This task helped me develop my creativity skills as it gave me the opportunity to think up a sequence of entropic and unusual ideas to make the video interesting and to engage my target audience. These ideas came from a mixture of two things; what I have already seen and how I wish to see things. For example, during my bus journey to and from college in the morning, I travel past many different sights including fields and smaller villages. This is where my original idea for location came from, as it connotes freedom, which I believe reflects my chosen song What's Going On; as it is the freedom to chose what is going on.

I also travel during the sunrise and return during sunset. Whilst seeing this when travelling, I thought it would be a good idea to use in the music video, as it sets the scene well and also reflects the song theme of confusion, as days can go by without a person understanding a situation etc. completely. After deciding on this idea, I remembered I had already seen this happen in a music video but sped up to save time and interest the audience. This video (Keith Urban's I Told You So; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udBYwtp67wg&feature=related ) is what I will be keeping in mind when filming the beginning and the end of my own video, as it is an example of a successful beginning and end to a music video.

The rest of the ideas for my music video came from a discussion of random ideas from my partner. For example, when first hearing the chosen song, synaesthesia helped me think of a desert style location. However, due to the country we live in and the lack of deserts here, the idea of a corn field sprung up. However, due to the time of the year we will be filming this location was not possible. Instead, me and my partner settled for a long grassed field, which gives off the same look as the cornfield would have done. With the theme of confusion and entropy in mind, we started thinking of ways to attract our target audience for the video, and came up with the scarecrow idea. We believe this reflects the song and interests the audience at the same time.

To continue with the creative week, I will be using these ideas to get some photographs for my print production work over the weekend.

Sir Ken Robinson however, once stated that less and less people are creative as people are becoming scared to make mistakes. He claimed that creativity is the process of not being scared to try new things and make mistakes. To some extent I agree with this idea, because if you are not going to take the chance, there is very little you can do without it becoming redundant and boring.

Music Video Genre - Performance

After analysing many music videos, I have realised that nearly all modern music videos can typically be placed in to one (or possibly more) of the same genres. For example, a performance by the artist is typically seen within the music video, whether it be live or in front of a green sheet and then edited. Some music videos contain only artist performances whereas others contain performances at a certain point within the video, for example the end. Stone Sour's 'Made Of Scars' is an example of a music video consisting of a performance throughout;

[[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tmxCRRmNhM&ob=av2e ]]

A more unusual example of this is Stone Sours' 'Say You'll Haunt Me'. This music video is high in entropic features as we do not see the band performance, but a ghostly version of the performance, as they are played in front of each band member. This emphasises the redundancy of the performance genre throughout modern music videos. I will bear this in mind when producing my own music video, as it is clearly a common way of producing a successful music video.

Pitch Feedback

Me and my partner pitched our idea to a group of people in the same age group as our target audience to see whether they believe our concept and idea would attract this audience. The feedback we got was surprisingly positive which made us believe we were addressing the correct audience.

The majority of the feedback emphasised this as our group claimed the target audience we were hoping to address was suitable for the genre we are using for the video. They also said our concept for the music video would address this audience well which I was happy about, as we got feedback saying it reminded them of Green Day and You Me At Six, which was the same target audience we were hoping to attract, suggesting we were aiming at the correct audience. One criticism we did get however, claimed that we were using very mainstream bands for our influences despite our song being indie. However, the ideas of the music video were collaborative of mainstream bands, such as Green Day's 'Wake Me Up When September Ends' and Nickelback's 'Photograph', but also less known mainstream artists such as Keith Urban's 'I Told You So' and 'Somebody Like You', which I believe all target the same audience despite the different genres.

Because our genre is indie, when planning the ideas for the music video, we wished to make it slightly entropic in order to attract our audience and make it stand out against other videos within the same genre. This is where the scarecrow protagonist came from. The feedback we received from our pitch suggested they 'liked the idea of the scarecrow coming to life'- which I believe will give the music video an entropic feel. Within our feedback one person claimed the idea was not very original because the ideas and concepts came from mainstream bands such as Green Day. However, it is only the locations which came from these bands, and even then they have been altered and changed due to the season which we will be filming, not the ideas.

The rest of the feedback suggested they believed the idea of the music video is exciting but also achievable, for example, one person said "REALLY like the song, I'm excited to see it", and another person claimed "I like the song and I think it will work well within the ideas they have."

One person however brought up the interesting question as to whether the idea will be serious or comedic. Me and my partner discussed this and due to the difference in humour between individuals, we're going to keep it a fun-serious type of video, as if the humour differs between each person, some individuals may dislike the video completely. Despite not focussing on the comedic side of the video, we will include some comedic gestures throughout the video, to add entropy and to keep the audience entertained.

Genre & Music Video

In order to produce a successful music video, it needs to be easy to recognise and categorise in to a particular genre. In order to do this,





attract correct audience.